ideal

Karl Marx

occupation / innovator as

United States senator

nationality

American

German

ambassador

politician

diplomat

editor

military officer

revolutionary

journalist

religion

Catholicism

scientific organization

American Academy of Arts and Letters

American Civil War

United States Ambassador to Spain

United States Secretary of the Interior

American Anti-Imperialist League

Revolutions of 1848 in the German states

is like a star. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.

Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.

is, in person, an offensive and arrogant man who treated those who disagreed with him with biting scorn for the pitiable ignorance of those who advanced them, or with a libellous questioning of their motives.

Never have I met a man [Karl Marx] of such offensive, insupportable arrogance. No opinion which differed essentially from his own was accorded the honor of even a half-way respectful consideration. Everyone who disagreed with him was treated with scarcely veiled contempt. He answered all arguments which displeased him with a biting scorn for the pitiable ignorance of those who advanced them, or with a libellous questioning of their motives. I still remember the cutting, scornful tone with which he uttered – I might almost say ‘spat’ – the word ‘bourgeois’; and he denounced as ‘bourgeois’ – that is to say as an unmistakable example of the lowest moral and spiritual stagnation – everyone who dared to oppose his opinion.

Carl Schurz

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Carl SchurzThinkers

Carl Schurz